The invention relates to an unlimited document feeder, and more particularly, to automatically coordinating the use of a plurality of sorter towers with multiple bins to accommodate successive loads of the document feeder to complete a single job requirement.
High volume duplication jobs often have more originals than the document handler can process in one load. However, in general, all copier/duplicator products conclude the job when the last document in the document handler has been copied. These jobs must therefore be broken into a number of "sub" jobs, each having no more originals than the document handler can hold. The result is a manual collation task to build up the final output sets from separate parts. This is very time consuming and offers too much potential for human error.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a system where the completion of the last original in the ADH does not terminate the job, but instead the operator is prompted to replace the completed stack of originals with another stack and continue the job.
It is an objective, therefore, of the present invention to provide a new and improved document feeder. It is another object of the present invention to provide a document feeder and control that prompts the operator to complete discrete portions of a total job by separate loadings of the automatic document feeder. It is a further object of the present invention to use from 1 to 6 bins to store each output set to provide a delivery point for multiple original load sets.
There is prior art on the basic concepts of a copier having both an ADH and a sorter, in combination, and with so called "limitless sorting" Limitless sorting is a known copying mode alternately using two sets of sorter bins, one of the sets of bins can be filled while the other set of bins is being unloaded.
Also of particular interest as relating to the subject of "limitless sorting" is U.S. Pat. No. 4,361,320 issued Nov. 30, 1982 to H. Kikuchi, et al. It discloses a single vertical array of bins divided (functionally) into two groups when the number of copies to be collated exceeds the number of bins, thus allowing copying to operate continuously and allowing an operator to remove the collated copies from one group while copies are being collated in the other group. When the number of pages of a document exceeds a predetermined number, the first group is defined to contain more bins than the second group, thereby reducing the number of times each document page must be fed to the copier.